Ross Levinsohn is an American media executive, author, and investor. He was formerly the CEO of Yahoo, co-founder and chairman of Old Navy Clothing Stores in North America, co-founder and vice chairman of EpicGear LLC, and chief operating officer of an IAC company called Ticketmaster Online Services from 1999 to 2004. He also served as interim CEO at AltaVista from 2000 to 2001.
Sports Illustrated CEO Ross Levinsohn served as CEO of Yahoo! from July 2011 until September 2012. He was appointed on May 11, 2011. He was hired to help improve Yahoo’s results through innovation and digital services. Levinsohn was previously the interim CEO of E*Trade for three months in late 2010 and served as a consultant for Google, CBS, and Oracle. He joined Yahoo in August 2000 as a chief operating officer of an IAC company called Ticketmaster Online Services. He oversaw Yahoo!’s e-commerce businesses and advertising partnerships and was responsible for the company’s dealmaking strategy.
Ross Levinsohn’s first major challenge as CEO was integrating three separate businesses (search, display advertising, and auctions) into a single monetization engine. He also led efforts to standardize Yahoo! mail across the company’s most popular Web sites. In May 2011, during the transition from CEO Jerry Yang, Levinsohn became vice chairman of the board of directors.
In September 2012, Yahoo announced that Sports Illustrated CEO Levinsohn was leaving Yahoo. He had been fired. On September 7, 2012, Ross was named an interim chief executive at Old Navy Stores Inc., and on October 8, 2012, he became the company’s full-time CEO. He resigned as CEO of Old Navy Stores Inc. on January 24, 2014, and joined Sling TV as Chief Executive Officer effective February 2014. Sling TV is a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation and Dish Network.